Three Nights in August: Strategy, Heartbreak, and Joy Inside the Mind of a Manager

Given unprecedented access to La Russa and his team, best-selling journalist Bissinger captures baseball's strategic and emotional essence. We watch from the dugout as La Russa's Cardinals take on their archrivals, the Chicago Cubs, in a thrilling three-game series.

One Last Strike

After 33 seasons managing in Major League Baseball, Tony La Russa thought he had seen it all - that is, until the 2011 Cardinals. Down ten and a half games with little more than a month to play, the Cardinals had long been ruled out as serious postseason contenders. Yet in the face of those steep odds, this team mounted one of the most dramatic and impressive comebacks in baseball history, making the playoffs on the night of the final game of the season and going on to win the World Series despite being down to their last strike - twice.

The Matheny Manifesto: A Young Manager's Old-School Views on Success in Sports and Life

Mike Matheny was just 41, without professional managerial experience and looking for a next step after a successful career as a Major League catcher, when he succeeded the legendary Tony La Russa as manager of the St. Louis Cardinals in 2012. While Matheny has enjoyed immediate success, leading the Cards to the postseason three times in his first three years, people have noticed something else about his life, something not measured in day-to-day results.

The Baseball Codes

Everyone knows that baseball is a game of intricate regulations, but it turns out to be even more complicated than we realize. What truly governs the Major League game is a set of unwritten rules, some of which are openly discussed (don’t steal a base with a big lead late in the game), and some of which only a minority of players are even aware of (don’t cross between the catcher and the pitcher on the way to the batter’s box).

Where Nobody Knows Your Name: Life In the Minor Leagues of Baseball

John Feinstein is one of the most influential sportswriters of the last three decades. In his masterful new audiobook, Where Nobody Knows Your Name, Feinstein delivers a fascinating account of the mysterious proving ground of America’s national pastime, pulling back the veil on the minor leagues of baseball.

So You Think You Know Baseball?: A Fan's Guide to the Official Rules

Essential for armchair umpires and scorekeepers, this guide challenges aficionados on every significant part of the Official Baseball Rules. Few sports lovers are as obsessed with rules and statistics as baseball fans. In So You Think You Know Baseball?, lifelong baseball enthusiast Peter E. Meltzer catalogues every noteworthy baseball rule from the Major League rulebook and illustrates its application with actual plays, from the historical to the contemporary. You can listen to the book from start to finish or consult it while watching a game to understand the mechanics of a play or how it should be scored.

Game of My Life: St. Louis Cardinals: Memorable Stories of Cardinals Baseball

Dating back to the Gas House Gang of the 1930s and up to the club’s most recent World Championship in 2006, being a Cardinal has meant a style of play, a level of dedication, and a pride in being a member of a special group. This newly updated edition of Game of My Life: St. Louis Cardinals exhibits not always the best game of someone’s career, but rather, the moment that stands out the most.

Pedro

Before Pedro Martinez was the eight-time All-Star, three-time Cy Young Award winner, and World Series champion, before stadiums full of fans chanted his name, he was just a little kid from the Dominican Republic who sat under a mango tree and dreamed of playing pro ball. Now, in Pedro, the charismatic and always colorful pitcher opens up for the first time to tell his remarkable story.

Amazon Customer says:"Entertaining story is marred by subpar narration"

Big Data Baseball: Math, Miracles, and the End of a 20-Year Losing Streak

Pittsburgh Pirates manager Clint Hurdle was old school and stubborn. But after 20 straight losing seasons and his job on the line, he was ready to try anything. So when he met with GM Neal Huntington in October 2012, they decided to discard everything they knew about the game and instead take on drastic "big data" strategies.

As They See 'Em: A Fan's Travels in the Land of Umpires

Millions of American baseball fans know, with absolute certainty, that umpires are simply overpaid galoots who are doing an easy job badly. Millions of American baseball fans are wrong. As They See 'Em is an insider's look at the largely unknown world of professional umpires, the small group of men (and the very occasional woman) who make sure America's favorite pastime is conducted in a manner that is clean, crisp, and true.

Ball Four: The Final Pitch

When Ball Four was published in 1970, it created a firestorm. Bouton was called a Judas, a Benedict Arnold and a “social leper” for having violated the “sanctity of the clubhouse.” Baseball commissioner Bowie Kuhn tried to force Bouton to sign a statement saying the book wasn’t true. Ballplayers, most of whom hadn’t read it, denounced the book. It was even banned by a few libraries. Almost everyone else, however, loved Ball Four.

Inside Baseball: The Best of Tom Verducci

As Sports Illustrated’s lead baseball writer since 1993, Verducci has witnessed the achievements of the game’s greatest heroes and told their inspiring stories with unmatched passion and sophistication. He has enriched SIs readers with an insider’s perspective on the game, examining subtle shifts in the ever-changing balance between pitchers and hitters, between slumps and streaks, between sacred records and the athletes trying to break them. Despite his deep affection for baseball, however, Verducci has never shied away from the hard truth about the game.

Seasons in Hell: With Billy Martin, Whitey Herzog and "The Worst Baseball Team in History"-The 1973-1975 Texas Rangers

Offering wonderful perspectives on dozens of unique (and likely never-to-be-seen-again) baseball personalities, Seasons in Hell recounts some of the most extreme characters ever to play the game and brings to life the no-holds-barred culture of major league baseball in the mid-'70s.

Molina: The Story of the Father Who Raised an Unlikely Baseball Dynasty

A baseball rules book. A tape measure. A lottery ticket. These were in the pocket of Bengie Molina's father when he died of a heart attack on the rutted Little League field in his Puerto Rican barrio. The items serve as thematic guideposts in Molina's beautiful memoir about his father, who, through baseball, taught his three sons about loyalty, humility, courage, and the true meaning of success.

Great Baseball Writing

When Sports Illustrated was launched in 1954, baseball was, indisputable, the national pastime, its stars America's epic heroes, its rivalries the era's mythology. As baseballs fortunes rose and fell over the next 50 years - and then rose again to new heights, drawing more than 65 million fans to ballparks in 2004 - the game never failed to produce great drama and inspired storytelling.

Our Game: An American Baseball History

This entertaining history blends anecdote, incident, and analysis as it chronicles the story of our national pastime. Alexander covers the advent of the first professional baseball leagues, the game’s surge in the early 20th century, the Golden 20s and the Gray 30s, the breaking of the color line in the late 40s, and the game’s expansion to its current status as a premier team sport. He describes changing playing styles and outstanding teams and personalities, but also demonstrates the many connections to society.

Francona: The Red Sox Years

From famed manager Terry Francona, a lively, unvarnished narrative of his tenure with the storied Boston Red Sox... From 2004 to 2011, Terry Francona managed the Boston Red Sox, the most talked-about, scrutinized team in all of sports. In Francona the legendary manager opens up for the first time about his eight years there, as they went from cursed franchise to one of the most successful and profitable in baseball history. He takes listeners inside the rarefied world of a 21st-century clubhouse.

Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game

Moneyball reveals a quest for something as elusive as the Holy Grail, something that money apparently can't buy: the secret of success in baseball. The logical places to look would be the giant offices of major league teams and the dugouts. But the real jackpot is a cache of numbers collected over the years by a strange brotherhood of amateur baseball enthusiasts: software engineers, statisticians, Wall Street analysts, lawyers, and physics professors.

Game of Shadows: Barry Bonds, BALCO, & the Steroids Scandal that Rocked Professional Sports

This audiobook is the window into the underground world of cheating at the highest levels, which set off a frenzy of activity and hand-wringing in the offices of Major League Baseball and Congress. Through the authors' pursuit of sources and documents, they were able to open for public view a world in which elite athletes trade money and risk their health for the edge that will allow them to run faster, hit harder, and compete longer, and then cash in on the fame and wealth.

Stranger to the Game: The Autobiography of Bob Gibson

Hall of Fame pitcher Bob Gibson has always been one of baseball's most uncompromising stars. Gibson's no-holds-barred autobiography recounts the story of his life, from barnstorming around the segregated South with Willie Mays' black all-stars to his astonishing later career as a three-time World Series winner and one of the game's all-time greatest players.

Tales from the St. Louis Cardinals Dugout: A Collection of the Greatest Cardinals Stories Ever Told

Offering listeners more than just a sneak peek into the dugout, Bob Forsch's Tales from the Cardinals Dugout takes fans into the clubhouse, out to the bullpen, onto the mound, up to the batter's box, around the base paths, along for the ride to spring training, and maybe even on a fishing trip or two in this tribute to the long and storied tradition of St. Louis Cardinals baseball. In his own witty style, Bo Forsch, known to many as "Forschie" during his playing days, has drawn from his exciting history with the Cardinals to bring fans stories that are laugh-out-loud funny.

Bill Veeck: Baseball's Greatest Maverick

William Louis 'Bill' Veeck, Jr. (1914-1986) is legendary in many ways - baseball impresario and innovator, independent spirit, champion of civil rights in a time of great change. Paul Dickson has written the first full biography of this towering figure, in the process rewriting many aspects of his life and bringing alive the history of America's pastime.

Blood Sport: Alex Rodriguez, Biogenesis, and the Quest to End Baseball's Steroid Era

All Porter Fischer wanted was the $4,000 Tony Bosch owed him. But Bosch would not pay him back, so he swiped Bosch’s Biogenesis ledgers as collateral. Fischer eventually examined the lists of clients and treatment plans revealed in the ledgers and saw what he really had: proof that major and minor sports figures came to the Miami antiaging clinic for anabolic steroids, human growth hormones, and other illegal drugs. That included one of the greatest sluggers in modern baseball history: three-time MVP Alex Rodriguez.

The Men in Blue: Conversations with Umpires

The philosopher Jacques Barzun thought that "whoever wants to know the heart and mind of America had better learn baseball". And whoever wants to know baseball had better learn about umpires. As Larry Gerlach points out in The Men in Blue, these arbiters transform competitive chaos into organized sport. They make it possible to "play ball", but nobody loves them.Considering the abuse meted out by fans and players, why would any sane person want to be an umpire? Many reasons emerge in conversations with a dozen former major-league arbiters.

Tony Escarzaga says:"Autobiographies of the Most Hated Men In Baseball"

The Extra 2%: How Wall Street Strategies Took a Major League Baseball Team from Worst to First

In The Extra 2%, financial journalist and sportswriter Jonah Keri chronicles the remarkable story of one team's Cinderella journey from divisional doormat to World Series contender. By quantifying the game's intangibles, they were able to deliver to Tampa Bay an American League pennant. This is an informative and entertaining case study for any organization that wants to go from worst to first.

Publisher's Summary

The Pulitzer Prize-winning author captures baseball's essence in this account of a dramatic three-game series viewed through the eyes of legendary St. Louis Cardinals manager Tony La Russa.

Through 25 years of managing, Tony La Russa has won more games than any current manager. He's the most strategically adept and arguably the smartest manager in baseball, and he still believes that games are won not by statistics, but by the hearts and minds of the players.

Given unprecedented access to La Russa and his team, best-selling journalist Bissinger captures baseball's strategic and emotional essence. We watch from the dugout as La Russa's Cardinals take on their archrivals, the Chicago Cubs, in a thrilling three-game series.

Some of the greatest players of our time grace the lineups: Albert Pujols, Sammy Sosa, Scott Rolen, Mark Prior. La Russa, a 40-year veteran of the game, shows why he's so revered. And Bissinger's laser-beam focus uncovers surprising truths about the pathology of slumps, the art of beanball retaliation, the eccentricities of pitchers, and the timelessness of the game. His swinging prose brings every moment gloriously to life.

What the Critics Say

"Enthralling." (Booklist) "Mixing classic baseball stories with little-known details and an exclusive perspective, this work should appeal to any baseball fan." (Publishers Weekly) "With a knack for detail, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author picks apart the fundamentals of the game, enters the mind of one of baseball's greats, and provides the reader with a front row seat. His ability to bring to life America's pastime is wholly provocative and excruciatingly detailed." (Bookmarks Magazine)

I'd recommend this book to anyone who wants to truly understand some of the layers of baseball that you don't normally think about. This book is not just for fans of the Cardinals or Larussa because most of it can be applied to any facet of any baseball team.

This book is about everything that is great and not so great about baseball. Great to listen too because it reveals the why and how this great game works and why we love it so much. The best insight about what really goes on behind the scenes and in front of the fan. If you want to learn and be entertained then this is one of the best listens I have had the pleasure to put on my iPod. Beautiful!

The writing is superb, the narration stellar. If you ever cared about baseball (and I don't as much as I used to), this is a compelling book about the beauty of the game. Even in this era of spoiled multi-millionaire players, there is still passion in the game, and you can feel it in each chapter of Three Nights in August.

This is a well written book whose knowledge of baseball is up to the task. The author Buzz Bissinger shows this in many ways; most importantly to me is the mention of Charley Lau who is one of baseball?s great teachers of hitting.

It did not hurt that the author makes a slight reference to Samuel Beckett?s Waiting for Godot, for I am also a Beckett reader.

The level of detail is fascinating. I enjoyed the book though it was, by its subject matter, somewhat dry. For anyone who is curious about the strategy of baseball that occurs behind the scenes, this is a good read.

I picked this book up in hopes that it would give me more insight to the mind of the man MLB named, The Genius. As a baseball coach, one can aspire to be as successful as Tony LaRussa. There are some good stories and the season detailed kept me interested, but I didn't ever get that feeling that I was learning something beyond I could have put together on my own by following the Cardinals via news, blogs, and online. If you are a Cards fan, then this will not disappoint. If you are a baseball fan, it's still worth a listen. It's not an any man baseball book like Moneyball though.

This is a Wonderful book. This book will give you insights into baseball. You will never watch or listen to a Baseball game the same way.

This book gives you the opportunity to get inside one of the most brightest minds in the game. You will have a whole new appreciation for the game and the way it is played. It is very well written and narrated.

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